I’ve realised recently that I’m a phases person. I have loads of ideas, get really passionate about them for a few months, but after a while they lose their attraction. Over the last year, I’ve written a daily blog on the Anglican lectionary (for a few months), I’ve reviewed music, for a few months, and made Jo a cup of tea in the morning. That one lasted about 2 days, I need to get back to it. It’s amazing, all of these ideas seem great, important, like they might make a real impact on me, or on others, but it’s hard to stick to them. In my head, something similar happens each time. Where I once felt able and excited to make time for things, I quickly get the sense that I’m far too busy, pressed in on. It all gets too much. I feel surrounded.
Do you ever feel like that? You have the best of intentions to do things, to help people, to better life for those around you, but things get in the way? You’re surrounded. Perhaps you feel like the unavoidable circumstances of life are what need your attention at the moment, and other parts of life just have to pause or give way for a season.
Maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe you feel that grace has run out for you. Maybe you accepted that God loves you, Jesus died an undeserved death for you, but things have happened, you know how it is? You’ve gone lukewarm, or cold in your faith. Life has been hard, it only seems to get harder. Every time you have things figured out and things are moving in the right direction, it’s like the rug is pulled out from underneath you. You feel guilty. You feel like you had the greatest gift a person could possibly have, but you threw it in God’s face. And at some point while you were doing that, it feels like it would be totally justified for God to wash his hands of you, wipe the dust from his feet as he leaves the house or town of your heart, and leave you to your own devices, to let things surround you, press you down, diminish you. It’s your bed. You made it, now you get to lie in it.
I don’t know if you feel like any of that rings true this morning. The only story I’m telling here, before you start feeling like big finger of judgement from the sky or the platform is pointing at you, is my own. I quite often find myself in a place where I feel like life has the best of me, like I’ve surrendered the hope and freedom Jesus won for me on the cross in favour of something different entirely, staying in my chains, in my lack of hope. I’m used to it, it’s almost comforting.
We, all of us, need to hear this, this morning. ‘God encircles his people, always has, always will’. Whatever you are feeling surrounded or pressed in by today, it’s not more powerful than the love of God. Grace does not run out for you. There are no burdens that you cast upon Him that he can’t or won’t take. The encircling of God’s people is not a passing phase, or something that he only does on Tuesdays. It is one of his promises to us. He will be with us. Around us, within us, through us, always. He is our strength and our refuge. I am not my own strength and refuge. He is my strength and refuge. I need to stop saying that God is my strength, and then living as if I am my strength. I need to stop being disappointed with myself when my strength runs out, or I get to the end of myself. Instead, at the end of myself, I need to find the courage to rejoice and celebrate that God is my strength. All of God’s promises are yes in Christ Jesus.
Grace is given to us, it’s not something we work on or grow. Grace is God pursuing us. He is after us, our lives. He is passionate for us. He will pursue you your whole life, until he brings you home into his household to enter in to your joy. You don’t have to worry about whether God is pleased with you, whether he likes you, whether you’re in the right place, doing the right things. He surrounds you. His promise to you is yes in Jesus.
There’s one detail of the Mark reading I want to pick out particularly this morning. It comes in verse 26:
The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
You may or may not think this is important, but I think it’s crucial. We (often quite rightly) focus on the things we need, the miracles, healings, cures, interventions from God, but we can miss the simple element of what we need to do: to trust God and seek to follow him. This woman is from a place outside of Israel. She is a Greek. She is not part of the group of people that Jesus is supposed to be saving, ministering to, healing or anything else. She’s an outsider, but somehow, in quite a cryptic conversation, she ‘gets’ who Jesus is and what he can do. She understands that he can meet her, and her daughter’s need, she trusts him to satisfy them. Jesus then proves that he can do exactly as she asks. It’s an odd encounter, I don’t understand it, and I certainly don’t know if it has consequences we can apply to all of life for our understanding of demons, or, in the following encounter, the deaf and mute man, but I do know this: God is able and willing to surround us with his love and continually find new ways of showing it to us. Jesus showed his love for the woman and her daughter in what he did. He showed that no one, wherever they’re from, however we feel about them, is beyond the grace of God. We are to follow him in showing love and grace to everyone, not being selective about it.
So, out of all that, how should we live differently? What’s the point? What’s the application? Well here it is: love the lord with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. This’ll look different for each one of us. There aren’t ways to be ‘better’ or ‘worse’ Christians. There’re decisions we make every day to trust God with more of our lives, to bring more of ourselves to him, to put others first, to pray for them, to care for them more than we care about ourselves. We can do all this because deep down, in the heart of our being, we know that we are surrounded, secure and safe, in the loving arms of our heavenly father. Accepting this, even for the hundredth time, could change your life. It could do more than that, it could change the world.